


this unsoundable space

by harulu



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rebuild of Evangelion | Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:34:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28059249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harulu/pseuds/harulu
Summary: Set between 2.22 and 3.33.
Relationships: Akagi Ritsuko/Ibuki Maya
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	this unsoundable space

Ibuki Maya sits at her desk, sifting through unwieldy databases of SNP maps. Exhaustion tears at the corners of her eyes, bloodshot, as propagation simulations run on the monitor beside her. She heaves her attention to it once more, a permanent frown setting into her face. 

Nothing yet. Maya suspects this will be another night of false starts—her last, if instinct can be trusted.

Adjusting her position, she leans forward, using the heels of her palms to press into her eyes. With each passing hour, her body keels to all sensation: the scratch of recently shorn hair on her neck; the tight squeeze of new boots at her ankles; and anxiety, like the swell of a wave, rocking her stomach. 

She sits with it all for a moment, tensing her body as if to contain it, to trap it in her muscles and squeeze it down to nothing. With an exhale, Maya falls back into her seat, the chair whining against the sudden break from her hours-long repose. 

Around her, the lab is staged, tidy, and so unlike the busy, lived-in place she had worked these past few years. She tries not to fault her team for their desire to please and impress, but she’s been here before. She cannot bring herself to play along.

Her monitor beeps. The program, which had been running for the last two hours, finishes the remaining simulations, confirming her earlier suspicions. Maya scans the read-outs and, giving up, shuts down her station. She stands, her joints cracking pleasurably with each stretch.

Maya adds to the communal white board, signs her name with the time, and leaves.

The clock reads 3:27.

But Maya cannot sleep, the blacks of her eyelids flashing with impressions of interfaces, graphs, code, starvation metrics. She thinks about the coming day. 

In an undisclosed location in the Tasman Sea, Maya's ship will join WILLE's fleet. This particular freight, used until now to sequence the genomics of high-yield food crops, is the biggest ship in the Vatican's navy, and the subject of an ongoing debate about requisitioning research vessels. Until now, the freight functioned as an agricultural testbed, largely maintained by coastal refugees with little interest in WILLE, or NERV, or Vatican politics. It had been a floating greenhouse, a food storage facility, her home.

Maya cannot sleep, but she will eventually get up, dress, and begin another day.

Vice Captain Akagi Ritsuko will tour the ship's facilities at 0800 hours to plan future outfitting. For war, as Maya understands it. They will remove the greenhouses and empty Maya's lab. Maya will not meet her.

She thinks she catches a glimpse of peroxide-blonde hair, but she is mistaken. Her breath catches and a queasiness overtakes her, stirred by excitement or anger or both. 

_Akagi Ritsuko_ , says her assistant, pouring Maya coffee. She is the same age that Maya was when Maya first joined NERV, and every bit as naive. _Didn’t you work together?_

The question is so casual, so honest. When Maya faces her, she is struck by familiarity—her awe at Maya’s potential connection, a hunger to know more about Maya’s past, to be the one to be told about it. 

“Sometimes,” Maya says, distantly. She musters her last bit of energy to pass the girl an easy smile. It’s all she can give.

An overheard conversation after midday, as Maya waits in line for the laundry facilities.

“But they’ll have experience with this.” It’s meant to be a defense, but uncertainty undercuts the effort. 

"No, _they_ were NERV,” says the other. “ _They_ are the ones responsible, and now they want to save us?” 

Maya averts her eyes.

Two days pass and Maya receives notice of the transfer that she had anticipated but never wanted. It is delivered to her while she works, her assistant peering over Maya’s shoulder as she opens it. 

Maya does not need to read to know what it says.

“To WILLE’s lead destroyer?” her assistant asks, failing to hide her confusion. “Why would they want you there?”

Maya folds the paper and returns it to its envelope, biting the inside of her lip. 

“I don’t know,” she says after a moment, a lie. She fixes her gaze steadfastly on the screen in front of her, wanting her assistant to leave.

Maya moves to her new quarters, occupying the top bunk in a closet-sized cabin. The hatch groans noisily when her bunkmates leave and return, and the faint smell of mildew and black mold waft through the corridors, nestling in her nostrils. The destroyer is spartan, cleansed of any sign of human habitation.

She rolls to her side, looking to where she knows another bunk stands, occupied by another nameless person. She discerns nothing in the blinding darkness. 

She thinks that she does not want to see the Vice Captain, that she prefers this game of calculated avoidance. But she knows this can’t be helped, either.

She is briefed the morning after, received by a stranger who speaks to her with disinterest. During WILLE’s early months, its core team identified MAGI’s immediate retrieval as its first priority. She is told Kaji Ryoji located MAGI’s German counterpart and enlisted Katsuragi to organize and lead the Berlin operation, with mixed results. A death, and MAGI sustained heavy damage in the aftermath, delivered to the Vice Captain incomplete and in disrepair. The rest, Maya is told, is left to her.

She finds MAGI herself, located in an abandoned bulkhead in the ship’s belly, a dank compartment invisible to anyone unaware of it. The room is dark, dizzying, and Maya gropes the adjacent wall for a switch, setting the perimeter alight in flickering red. Her eyes adjust slowly and her breathing shallows, wavering on her feet. Maya reaches for her holster for comfort, and, touching the rubber hilt of her pistol, leans against the wall.

Impressions solidify. An exposed column appears at the room’s center with a small opening carved at its base, enough to fit a person. She exhales, rolls her shoulders with a shudder, and walks toward it. 

Cluttering the pillar are layers of notes penned variously by the Akagi women: sharp, precise handwriting, differentiated only by the angularity of Akagi Naoko’s lines.

She chooses one—dated nine months ago—and finds the nearest light, an uncanny sensation washing over her. Like falling without impact, like walking through a memory.

“You won't get very far.”

Maya drops the paper, startled. The voice rings in her ears.

Maya stands frozen in place, eyes transfixed on what feels like a ghost. As ever, the Vice Captain is controlled, impassive, and navigates the dark deftly, handing a file to Maya, who takes it wordlessly, hoping that the tremor in her hands passes unnoticed. 

Maya thumbs through the pages, patches and proofs written long-hand, some underlined, some decorated with annotations that guide her to other clarifying sections. She recognizes the code having spent a year studying it, though it has been heavily modified in the last half-decade.

And so this is the reason she is summoned—because she is needed, because she knows the MAGI System better than anyone else, save the woman watching her. Reading, the situation reveals itself to her perfectly: not only did they retrieve a damaged MAGI, but a compromised one as well. They have been housing an Angel in secret, right under the Vatican's nose. She wants to laugh, to slide the file back to her old mentor. This is not her problem anymore. This does not need to be her problem anymore.

“What does this mean?”

But she is ignored, the other woman turning to the door. “Follow me.” 

Maya does not, silently reveling in her petulance. “You need to explain first.” 

Turning, the Vice Captain looks at her again, regarding Maya with amused coldness.

“Do I?” 

“Akagi-san—” But Maya stops, steps back. Where to begin? What could she say now, here?

“ _Akagi-san_ ,” she repeats to herself, softly. "How formal." 

Silence. Standing there watching each other, Maya knows that this is the extent of her resistance. That even without a direct order, Akagi Ritsuko needs only to ask and Maya would follow, compelled by something she does not understand. She knew this when the requisition order was given, and now she recognizes it with astonishing clarity—a clarity that her old mentor has already parsed, and understood, and used to her benefit. Maya smiles to herself, sad and disappointed and wanting. 

“There are better places to answer your questions, Lieutenant.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Part II soon. Comments are appreciated.


End file.
